Superman Smokes

Superman Smokes
Evelyn Deshane

Dead telephone lines snake through
a glass box filled with sea-changed secrets
of supermen & wanting women
pressed up against glass;
my true romance means
collect calls & taxi drivers
fields in Kansas, manifest destiny;
quarters left in slots spared
& handprints etched in smooth surfaces
like skin and only broken
by another metal, another man
searching for enough reasons to save
a city & enough alcohol
to make it sound less like an origin story
& more like an anonymous love story tonight.

Evelyn Deshane has appeared in Plenitude Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Rusty Toque, and Lackington’s. Their chapbook, Mythology, was released in 2015 with The Steel Chisel. Evelyn (pron. Eve-a-lyn) received an MA from Trent University and currently studying for PhD at Waterloo University. Visit them at: evedeshane.wordpress.com.